Pure Review

Black Rock's new off-road racer catches crazy air.

Ripping around a tight corner covered with loose glacial scree, I dig in, nail the nitrous boost and preload my bike's suspension at the top of a 45-degree jump. With a lurch, my ATV leaves the ground and launches into the air, floating hundreds of feet above the mountains of New Zealand before beginning its sickeningly fast decent. Being the cool-headed racer I am, I decide this is the perfect time to pull off a series of aerial tricks, including the Saddle Flip, in which I stand on my quad bike's seat and do a backflip in midair. I land it like a pro, bank some boost juice as a reward and speed off toward the next jump.

It's a typical moment in Pure, the new off-road ATV racing title from Black Rock Studio and Disney Interactive, but the game is anything but. The developers at Black Rock, formerly Climax before the studio was purchased by Disney, are no strangers to the racing game scene, having worked on the ATV Offroad series and other racing titles for years. But rather than go the simulation route for their newest project, Black Rock decided to take things in an entirely different direction by focusing on wild, over-the-top action. The result is an incredibly satisfying thrill ride that succeeds in delivering edge-of-your seat action in a striking, inviting package.

Pure is a racer with the soul of an extreme sports game. There are times when you'll be gunning for the finish line above all else, focused only on hitting your racing line and digging in to take corners perfectly. But most of your time will be spent doing things that shouldn't be physically possible, and this is when Pure is at its best.

The now-standard basic racing control scheme is here -- right trigger accelerates, left trigger brakes and the left analog stick steers your ride. Like many other off-road racing games, you can also "pre-load" your rig's suspension before taking off from a jump by flicking quickly down and then up on the left stick to get even bigger air. Vehicle feel is extremely important in racing games, and Pure gets it right. Bikes have enough weight without feeling clunky when you get them airborne, and tires dig appropriately into terrain when you're taking corners. Although there's no damage modeling, opponents can bump you off the track or land on your head to unpleasant effect during a race, so it pays to stay out of the AI drivers' way.

But the intuitive trick system is what sets Pure apart. When your quad is in the air, you can pull off tricks by hitting one of three face buttons and a direction on the left stick. You'll start each race with only Level 1 tricks available. Land enough of these and the Level 2 tricks will open up, followed by Level 3. Each of these is mapped to the number keys, or the A, B and Y buttons on the Xbox 360 controller, which we used primarily in our tests fo the PC version of Pure.

As you ramp up your trick availability during a race, you'll also bank nitrous boost, shown as a fluid blue wedge beneath your trick meter and controlled by the space bar/X button. Depending on what type of race you're participating in, you'll constantly balance doing tricks, which fills your boost meter, and using that boost, which takes away your ability to pull off higher-level tricks.

To discourage you from getting in a rut, each trick is graded on the fly as being "Fresh," "Tame" or "Stale," depending on how many times you've recently landed it. The fresher the trick, the more boost and points you get. You can also tweak each move on the fly by holding down the left or right bumper at the end of the trick, giving you even more flexibility. The controls are intuitive, the tricks are wild and fun, and the grading system pushes you to try new things. In short, Pure's controls make it easy to pick up but hard to put down, the Holy Grail of videogame controls.